Notes: I wrote this a long time ago, and although it still seems reasonable, I don't think the Kirk/Lester relationship would have ended this way anymore. I'm still fond of this story, though.
Gareth Mitchell looked up from his calculus and wriggled his unshod toes thoughtfully. The prickles at the back of his neck said his roommate was going to walk through that door, and he was going to be upset. Five... four... three... two...
A force of nature plunged through the door, crashed face-first on his bed, and started kicking the wall.
"What's'a matter, kid," Mitchell asked, returning to his equation. "Got a A-minus on your history quiz?" Finishing with a flourish, he laid down the stylus and stretched forward over the table, relieving back muscles that had been in a state of chronic cramp since fifteen minutes after his last class got out.
Jim flipped onto his back, laced his fingers behind his head, scowled at the ceiling, and stopped kicking the wall in favor of the bedframe. "I hit Janice," he said. "She's in the Infirmary. They won't let me see her."
Mitchell straightened up from his habitual slouch, and stared. "Oh," he said without thinking, "this should be good."
Jim transferred the scowl to him. "If you say you told me so I'll write to your mother about--"
"Well I'd have to think back a bit," Mitchell drawled, "but I don't remember telling you I thought you were going to hit your girlfriend. Richly though she deserves it."
Jim removed one hand from behind his head and spread it helplessly at his friend. "She was attacking Commodore Noguchi."
Mitchell's stare turned bug-eyed. "Jesus! Is she nuts?"
"Yeah," Jim said, flopping back onto his stomach. "She snapped."
"You know," Mitchell said after a moment, "If you really feel like you need to be kicked, I could do it for you. You don't have to do it yourself. " Jim managed a faint grin for him, but didn't stop. "Seriously, kid, you're going to leave bruises, and then how'll you sit through Protocol?"
"Serve me right."
Mitchell made a face at him. "You know, we're having a minor communications problem here. Namely: you aren't telling me anything that makes sense. Make sense. Stop flapping around like a caught fish and pretend you're being debriefed."
Deliberately, Jim turned over one more time. Then he pulled the pillow over his head.
Mitchell got over there, wrenched the pillow away, and battered his roommate with it until Jim had stopped shouting, and stopped fighting, and stopped laughing. He let his wrists be grabbed and gripped as Jim bowed his head and shuddered. "I'm listening."
Jim sighed, pulling himself together. "You know what today is, right?"
"Tuesday?"
"No," he was informed with unusual patience. "It's the day my year got our final test results back. Next year at this time, Gary, you'll know your class rank and which track you're being sent to. Mark it on your calendar."
"Right, right. So what's your point, kid?"
"Janice is in my class."
"And?"
"We found out at the same time."
"And?"
"She didn't do as well as I did."
"And?"
"I'm going into command track."
"Congratulations!" This wasn't actually much of a surprise, but it was one thing to know your roomie deserved high honors yourself, and quite another to have the bright brass agree with you. He didn't have to counterfeit the pleasure in his voice.
"Thanks."
"You sound so thrilled."
"They've put her in medical sciences."
"So?"
"So she didn't have time to adjust to her score before she had to deal with mine."
"Okay, kid, you lost me."
Jim let go one of his wrists in order to gesture. Mitchell sat down next to him. "I don't know, Gar. Maybe it's the age thing. Anyway, she saw her score and got pissed off, and then she grabbed mine, and..."
"Snapped."
"Screeched, Gar. I haven't heard anyone hit that note since the Sioux City Savoyards did Pirates of Penzance and Frederick stomped on Mabel's understudy's slipper in the middle of 'Poor Wandering One' to shut her up. God, she was flat. Then she--Janice, I mean--started yelling that there had to be a mistake, they'd mixed up our names. It sounded reasonable to me, so--"
Mitchell rolled his eyes. "Only you, James."
"Well, it did! It's not like she flunked or anything. She had a very respectable score. And I slacked off in engineering last term, you know I did."
"Because you were drowning in xenobiology and spending all your spare time overdoing your tactics homework."
"Um. Yes. But what with Mom and Sam, I've got a decent scientific grounding, and I had a good empathy rating on the ESPer tests--"
"You did?"
"Nowhere near as high as your telepathy, of course, not even as high as for my clairvoyance, but the needle moved."
"Huh. Jim, do you really think that test has anything to do with anything?"
"I don't know why it should. But they use it. Anyway, I was just glad they hadn't put me in security or maintenance. I don't have good hands for surgery--"
"Oh, for chrissake."
"I don't. This was explained to Mom when she fell in love with the concept of 'bard' and tried to sign me up for harp lessons in sixth grade."
Gary grinned. "I didn't know you could play harp."
"I just said--"
"Yeah, but knowing you, you got pissed off at having your hands insulted and decided to learn it anyway."
"It wasn't just the hands, he said my temperament was wrong."
"Yeah, that would do it."
"Um. Well, I only studied for a couple of years; it's not like you can bring a floorharp to the Academy. And my hands are the wrong shape. I'm not very good. At all."
"I don't believe you. You were saying?"
Jim looked as if he were seriously considering sticking his tongue out. Gary wished he would. He loved it when his friend acted his age. "But I wouldn't have minded going into... oh, I don't know. I was just relieved about not having to be a redshirt. So I said she was probably right, and I'd go with her and ask. She said she didn't need my help, and I said it was my grade in question, too. She calmed down a little then, and agreed with me."
"So you went straight to Commodore Noguchi?"
"What, are you kidding? We went to see Commander Komack."
"But I thought she attacked Noguchi."
"He was there. He and Commander Komack and Lieutenant-Commander Wesley were talking about the mission the USS Stalwart's on. Something about Klingons." He sighed. "I would have liked to listen. My dad's on the Stalwart."
"Chief of Security, right?"
"Yeah. We haven't heard from him in a while. I think Mom's getting worried. Anyway, Janice didn't want to wait to be announced. She didn't even knock. She just barged in past Yeoman Welling. I was so embarrassed."
"But you followed her in?"
Jim cast a slanting glance up at him, and his lips quirked wryly. "I didn't have much of a choice, Gar." He held up his wrist. There was a thick, blotchy, red band around it, which looked likely to turn into a bruise, and four ragged half-moons bleeding lightly on the underside.
"Jesus!"
"Exactly. I feared for my artery. But, you know, what the hell, she needed something to hold onto. So I let her drag me. She was so upset that no one even yelled at us."
"That's pretty upset."
"Well, Yeoman Welling said something, but the breeze of our passing obscured it from my ears. She started off trying to be reasonable and conciliatory--Janice, I mean. She was shaking really hard, but she was trying to be calm. She started off saying there'd been a computer error, it had mixed up our names, which was understandable--James and Janice, you know."
"Kirk and Lester? I don't think so."
"You know, that's exactly what Lieutenant Wesley said?"
"Great minds, James, great minds."
"Uh-huh. Her point was that they're very close alphabetically, and our Academy ID numbers are right next to each other. Then Commander Komack said he'd never yet known the computer to mix up the records of people with different names, ages, and genders. Then she went nuts."
"She flew at Noguchi because of something Komack said?"
"No, she just started yelling and gesturing really loudly." He took a deep breath, and bit and his free knuckle, and started talking in a monotone. "She forgot to let go of my hand. If the computer hadn't done it, they'd done it deliberately. They'd fixed the scores to keep women out of the command track. They were trying to make her be a nurse because that was a woman's job. I didn't deserve a ship, I was a baby, it was just because I'm a guy. She works so hard and she deserves it."
Gary whistled. "I thought she was a feminist."
Jim shook his head. "Nuh-uh. My grandmother's a feminist. She thinks in a way which implies equality between the sexes. For example, she wears leggings because they're available in our culture, they look good on her , she can't think why men and women should be held to a different standard of dress, and anyway skirts are cold. My mother's a feminist. She thinks in a way which doesn't even consider inequality between the sexes. She wears skirts because she likes them and they're cool in the summer, and she wears jeans because they're practical. Janice is not a feminist. She insists on uniform trousers because that's what men wear. She explained it to me. And there are other things."
"Like what?"
Jim squirmed uncomfortably, as though his self-inflicted kicks were beginning to bother him. "Just... things."
Gary raised his eyebrows. "I see." And he did. Now he had to shift position. He hadn't really thought of the kid like that before. It wasn't an unpleasant thought.
"God, I hope not," Jim muttered, barely vocalizing, his lips hardly moving. He colored a little, and Gary unobtrusively crossed his legs. Jim cleared his throat. "So the Commodore got really severe with her. He called her a young lady, which I could have told him was a mistake. He said that good officers didn't think in terms of entitlement, and didn't expect to deserve things at the expense of others. He said her ambition smelled too much like arrogance, her pride was likely to get someone killed, and she was better at science than strategy, anyway.
"She started shrieking again. She was almost incoherent; it sounded like she was accusing him of heading up a male conspiracy consisting of everyone in the room and probably on campus. He gave her a demerit for rank insubordination, called her paranoid, and suggested she go down to the Infirmary for therapy if she wished to stay in Starfleet."
"And that's when she attacked him."
"Clever lad, have a cigar. The others didn't interfere; he didn't order it and she wasn't doing any harm--except to me; she still hadn't let go. I think they wanted to see what I would do. She was kind of using me as a blunt instrument. So I wrenched my arm away and dragged her off him. She got away from me and attacked him again. So I pulled her off again and knocked her out. And then they sent for a medic and a stretcher with restraints."
"Domestic abuse. Tsk, tsk. You didn't try talking first?"
"Yes, but I couldn't hear myself above the screams."
"Ah. And aside from Janice, how did you make out?"
"I didn't. One girl at a time is good tactics, Gar, you should try it sometime."
Gary punched him lightly in the shoulder, grinning.
"Komack reprimanded me at length for hitting a fellow cadet, and Admiral Noguchi thanked me for getting her off him, and told me I needn't worry about my place in the class. And then Lieutenant Wesley asked me if she was my friend."
"Well, hitting her probably sent kind of a mixed message. What did you say?"
He shrugged. "I said something like I was Janice Lester's friend, and I didn't quite know what had happened to her or what space-happy alien had taken her place, and I was going to go along to the Infirmary to make inquiries as soon as I was dismissed, if they didn't mind. So they dismissed me, and I went, and they made me wait half an hour before they told me they wouldn't let me see her. And then I came back here."
"To kick your own ass. You didn't have to put yourself out, kid. She's gonna be happy to do it for you as soon as she wakes up."
Jim shrugged. "I don't like guys who hit their girlfriends," he explained reasonably. "I saw enough of them at home to form a very bad opinion of their overall character. That kind of thing needs to be--"
"Kicked in--"
Jim scowled, and started to correct him. "Nipped in the--"
"Butt?"
"Bud! And I got off easy for hitting a fellow cadet."
"Who was attacking your commanding officer."
"There must have been a better way," Jim insisted, his jaw set at an angle which made him look like the stubborn child that, Gary supposed, he was.
"Well, if you think of one, you can use it next time. But for god's sake, don't brood. Life's too--"
Twee-whit.
"--Short. I'll get it." But by the time Gary had half-risen to answer the comm, Jim had darted across the room and thumbed the answer switch.
"Dorm 207, Cadet Kirk here."
"Cadet, this is the Infirmary. Cadet Lester has regained consciousness and is calling for you."
"I'm on my way," he promised, "Kirk out. Come on, Gary."
"Me?" he demanded, banging his head on the middle drawer of his desk as he fished for his boots. "What do I have to do with it?"
"If Janice is mad enough to kill me, she'll probably be mad enough to tell them I wanted to be cremated. I need you to tell them I want to be tied to the top of a tree in the Black Hills."
"The which?"
"You know, the range with Mount Rushmore. But not that one particularly; it's already got enough dead white guys on it."
"Uh-huh."
"Stop it. I've told you before; I don't want people knowing where my body is. It's supposed to return to nature, not sit around getting gawked at. --Jeez, Gar, learn to untie your boots before you take them off, would you?"
"Saves time," he grunted, yanking at the laces.
"Oh, yes, we're saving time now," Jim drawled. "Whee. Get off, let me at it."
Gary held his breath as the younger cadet slipped down to sit cross-legged in front of him and fiddle with his bootlaces, the overhead light buttering his grey uniform, gleaming off the curve of his cheekbone, turning his rusty-pale hair a living red-gold in the pallid square room.
"I thought the point here was to save time, Gary. It might work better if you tied the other boot while I'm doing this one. --Oh, never mind, I'll do it."
"Go right ahead." He managed to make his grin look merely smug. His roomie's hands were, apparently, more dexterous than their blunt fingers promised. He wondered about that harp, among other things.
And then the boots were secure on his feet, neatly double knotted, and James was surging to his feet, grabbing Gary's wrist to drag him up. "Let's go!"
"Are you always so eager to face the firing squad?" They were in the hallway now, and something about James' eager pace and set face told him that his roomie was seriously tempted to break the rules and trot.
James chuckled sheepishly, slowed down, and let go. "Sorry."
"That's okay, you only dislocated my elbow." His wrist, bared by the length of the uniform sleeves, was warm where James had grabbed it. He silently advised himself to get a grip. No! Not on James! Bad!
"What?"
He widened grey eyes innocently. "What what?"
James looked towards the ceiling, apparently for strength. "You grabbed my arm, Gary."
"Uh... you missed the turn."
James eyed him warily. "No, it's two hallways down."
Gary made a show of checking the hall numbers. "So it is. Whaddaya know. Never mind. I don't see," he complained, in order to change the subject, "why we can't have boots with normal fastenings instead of those antiquated laces."
"Boots with normal fastenings are either on or off. Those antiquated laces," James informed him with admirable patience, "conform to the shape of your foot."
"They're a pain," Gary grumbled as they left the building and headed across the garden path to the Infirmary. "And they shouldn't have the garden next to the Infirmary. What if someone with hay fever broke a rib? They'd tear their lungs up sneezing on the way to the doctor."
"They can treat hay fever," James said, sniffling.
"Then why don't you get the treatment?" he accused.
"I'm allergic to it."
"Well, what if you broke a rib?"
James rolled watering eyes. "I survived six springs and subbers as a polytheist in Happy Bible Belt Lad amugst the Christian Scientists and the ragweed, Gar, I think I can hadle a three binute walk through a flower garden. Besides, it's dice to look out the widdows and see all this."
"How would you know?"
"What do you bean?"
"I don't think you've ever even been in the building."
"Baybe I'm just healthy."
"Of course you are, baybe. Incidentally, what happened to all my anti-nausea drugs when we--oh, of course, excuse me, naturally I mean when I got the flu? And who keeps tearing strips of bark off the willow tree every time you fight with Janice, and oh, by the way, what's that awful tea you drink during finals made from, and where do you get it?"
James scowled defensively. "I doh't like hospitals, that's all."
"Sure, James."
"They spell dead."
"Okay. The places where life is given and restored smell dead."
"They do! All sterile and forbaldehyde."
"Am I arguing with you?"
"Dot technically, doe."
"All right, then. So, Mr. I-hate-sickbay, what's your rush?"
"This time," James informed him triumphantly as the doors opened for them, "I'm not ah--achoo! the patiedt."
"No, patient is not a word I'd use to describe you," Gary grinned. Suspecting fondness behind his eyes, he made sure to direct his gaze away from James.
"You dow what I bead."
"It would have worked better if you hadn't stopped to sneeze in the middle, James. Need a handkerchief?"
"That would be dice," James allowed cautiously, eyes red and streaming and one hand clapped to his face.
"Ask the nurse, maybe she's got one."
"Die," he suggested with pleasant brevity.
"How exactly did get you through those six summers again?"
"Holdig fast to the doledge that by cousin Ricky was eved worse off thad be."
"Than I."
"What?"
"Worse off than I."
"Die and rot." He wrinkled his nose in a display of gratuitous cuteness and sniffed. Somehow, Gary wasn't as annoyed by it as he felt he should have been. He cuffed him one anyhow, just on principle. James, even warmer through his own uniform than he had been through Gary's, accepted the light blow with exaggerated stoicism, and then they were at the receptionist's desk. "Cadets Kirk ad Bitchell," he informed the secretary, "here to see Cadet Lester, sir."
"Bitchell?" Gary wondered whether that was deliberate, and whether he ought to be insulted.
James ignored him. "Do you have a tissue?"
The yeoman eyed him sympathetically. "Got one right here. You the boyfriend?"
"He is," Mitchell took it upon himself to say as James mopped his upper face with the proffered tissue and sniffed loudly. Gary wasn't sure if he was playing for sympathy or simply congested. Probably both. Using weakness as strength was a concept which would undoubtedly appeal to James. "I'm just along for moral support."
"You poor kid." One red and hazel eye peered above the wet white square in mild alarm. "Is she always like this?"
"Doe! Doe, sir, she isit."
"That was a no, sir," Mitchell cut in. "She's usually creepy, seriously creepy, but not psycho. It's a hospital, James. Nobody's going to care if you blow your nose." James glared at him, outraged. "And that would be more intimidating without the hankie." Privately, he admitted that without the tissue it would have worked very well indeed. He wondered whether James was angrier about having his girlfriend maligned or about being treated like a child in front of the yeoman. He wasn't sure the kid was sure.
The yeoman, sensing a potential outburst from the walking tornado, spoke up briskly. "Cadet Lester is under restraints in private room 10H. Do you know your way? Six doors down, take a right, three more and another, and then it's the fifth door on your left. Announce yourselves to the nurse on duty. I'd wish you a nice day but I don't think you're going to have one. Good luck, cadets." He thumbed a piece of dark hair out of his eyes, and bent back to his paperwork.
The hallways felt long to Gary, and he was just as glad of it. James was still miffed at him, but he could practically feel the irritation falling away, replacing itself with anxiety. That was his James, never happy unless he was upset about something or too busy to think.
Ordinarily he'd rather have James angry than worried, for worry seemed to scramble the kid's thought processes, but in his opinion the best defense available right now was helplessness.
And it was nice to just walk with him in quiet, just being there. It wasn't something he usually preferred; he liked to keep busy at least as much as James did, but they were walking into a whirlwind and this brief quiet was good. Then, when James had exchanged pleasantries with the nurse in a normal voice, teasing him about acting extra congested to get sympathy from the yeoman was also good, as was it when James got defensive about how much clearer his system got once out of pollen-range.
He teased him about flirting with older women, too, but his voice got flippant about it, so he must have meant it more than he thought. He didn't see why he should have been serious about it; James certainly hadn't been, with Lester in the picture.
Lester. Right.
It always amazed him how innocent and delicate-looking Little Miss Tough Guy could make herself when she really tried, and having herself tied to an Infirmary bed was damn good scene setting. The metallic orange blanket drained the color from her relaxed face, making her pale and pathetic, and the black nubs of the restraints vanishing beneath it underscored the impression. There was no way James wasn't falling for this. He probably thought the drooping eyes meant exhaustion.
Gary, however, could tell a hood-eyed snake when he saw one, and he stepped forward to shield his roommate without really thinking about it. It didn't surprise him when a strong arm jumped out to bar his way and James slipped in front of him. That James didn't bull forward did, though, and the wary tension in the smaller body frankly astonished him.
"Careful, Gary. She's loose and armed."
Gary gawked, then followed the narrow gaze to the floor by the bedside table. It was very wet, and there were slivers of glass all in the liquid. "Okay, so someone had an accident. What's that prove?"
"The bottom of the glass isn't there. And the restraints go on top of the blankets."
"And you were last in a sickbay when?"
"Lay off, Gary, my godfather married his CMO, I know how a sickbay's supposed to work." He shifted his attention back to the bed, and spoke in a reasonable tone. "Janice, what were you expecting to do? Were you going to run off campus in your shift? Into San Francisco, or the Starfleet complex? You'd be pretty conspicuous, and how would you manage without a credit chit? Were you going to go back to your dorm to get your stuff first? How did you intend to not get caught? Were you going to threaten your roommate, get yourself another demerit, get sent home in disgrace, and get her in trouble, too? You do realize that they can trace the use of your credit chit, don't you? There's no way you could have gotten anywhere without Starfleet knowing, and then what were you going to tell your parents?"
Her answer contained a pronoun, an obscenity, and the word 'smug,' not in that order.
"You're just not thinking," James insisted, still in that maddeningly reasonable voice. "You've got to plan, Janice. Consider your options. Yeah, you've got another demerit, you're going to have to go through the psych evals again, but you attacked a commodore, what did you expect? At least you're not getting washed out."
She glared.
James switched his voice to cajolery. "Come on, Janice, do you really want to go home? Just quit? They want you to stay, or they would have told you already, and they would have told me at the desk. Noguchi has every right to send you packing--"
Gary ducked, but James had caught the sharp glass neatly, one handed, only flinching a little. His jaw dropped, but he settled his face quickly. James was going to get the third degree about that later.
"--Well, he does, Janice, you nearly clawed his eyes out, and do you realize you just gave me your weapon? Lie back, or I'll have Gary hold you down and tie the restraints myself. I should have called for an orderly as soon as I saw the floor, you realize that, right?"
James let her rant for a few seconds, then nodded at him. He was all too happy to step forward and push his sleeves up. He hoped James would actually follow up on his warning, but he wasn't too surprised when she flopped back onto the pillows, smoldering and resentful.
"James, your hand okay?"
"Just a few cuts, nothing serious. Don't worry, Gary, I'm good with projectiles."
"I could tell."
James paused, and actually looked at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Never mind."
"Oooh-kay." He turned back to Janice. "But, Janice, he really could. You attacked a seriously superior officer. A crewman could get court-martialed for that. He's just making you get some treatment."
Gary couldn't understand a word of the next spew of verbiage. He didn't even think it was in Standard.
James seemed to catch the drift of it, though. "For the gods' sake, Janice, he's not ruining your career! You were disappointed and you got a little crazy, that's all. It happens. He knows that. He's being really lenient--no! Don't even get started! It's not because you're a girl, it's because it happens to people. They'll let you screw up once, school's there so you don't make your mistakes in the field."
"When did you screw up, kid?" It was a bad moment for it, he knew, but he was curious.
James gave him a tight half-smile. "Not in school. People died. Ain't school grand?"
"Is that what you keep having nightmares about? James..." He stepped towards him, and lifted his hand. He wasn't sure where he intended to put it, and it ended up hovering somewhere between James' cheek and shoulder.
James glared at him and took a step away, towards the bed. "This isn't about me!"
It was at this point that Lester made a nasty comment which made James stare blankly and Gary blush. It involved the distinction between roommates and bunkmates, and inquired whether they knew the difference.
"All right," James said firmly, "now you've stopped making sense, so we're going to go away."
"Actually, I think that was the first intelligible thing she's said all day," Gary put in helpfully, still a bit red about the ears.
Janice snarled at both of them. "It makes perfect sense, Kirk!" She hurled the name harder than the glass. This time James actually flinched back, bumping into him. He found his hands bracing James' shoulders, and decided to leave them; they felt good there, and the kid could probably use the backing. "All those times you said there wasn't another girl and I believed you--because you were telling the truth, weren't you? Not another girl, another guy! I bet you only slept with a girl for cover. I bet you only slept with me because I think like a man! Mikaela was right, all the good men are taken or GAY!" She screamed the last word and kept screaming, head thrown back and the tendons in her neck standing out.
James stared at her, struck dumb with amazement and what looked like awe. Gary blinked at her for a moment with grudging respect for her lungpower, then commented under the noise, "She doesn't think like any guy I've ever met. I'm going for reinforcements, James. Keep a good grip on that glass."
He sidled out of the room. The orderly was already coming, pulled in by the shrieks. He asked if everything was all right. "Well, aside from the rabid she-wolf in 10-H, yeah, everything's fine, sir," Mitchell told him, and followed him in, muttering, "Can we say 'inferiority complex,' James? Sure we can. Good boy. Now, can we say 'bad news,' James? Apparently not!"
"You were doing real well up to the end," he said, much later, when he'd had as much as he could take of James lolling on his bed, staring into nothing. Although it was a beautiful evening in the real world, it was a dark and stormy in force-of-nature-land.
James let his head fall to the side and looked at him wearily. "You mean where I went into shock and let the neanderthal think it was my fault and got thrown out of the Infirmary?"
"That was the one."
"I've never seen anyone get that hysterical," he said, rolling onto his stomach and connecting eyes with Gary, morbidly fascinated. "I mean, people were pretty scared on Tarsus, and there were a couple of panic attacks, and some of us got angrier than I thought you could get and still be sane, and maybe we weren't sane, but I've never seen anything like that. It was all... focused."
Gary made an assenting noise, and went over to flop next to him. "So you'll figure out a better plan for next time. What can I say, kid? She's a rabid she-wolf," he offered, messing up his roomie's hair. James actually snickered, rolling back to a prone position to make room for him and, not incidentally, get away from his hand. "I see we've quit brooding?"
"I don't think 'we' ever started."
"And I suppose we haven't been staring at the ceiling all evening?"
"We just lost a girlfriend to insanity, Gar. We're allowed to be a little contemplative."
Gary sprawled, taking up the space James had allotted him and then some. James shoved amiably and half-heartedly at the foot draped over his knees. "I dunno, James, your girl broke up with you. Aren't you supposed to be clawing the furniture and wailing at the moon?"
"I think you're mixing up your pets. I'm kind of relieved, actually."
"First evidence of good judgement I've seen yet. Now I know why they picked you for command track."
James whacked his ribs with an open hand. He retaliated sneakily, and the tickle fight ended quite acceptably, with James pinning his wrists to the bed and demanding surrender. He grinned cheekily up, not willing to say anything which would make James move. "You do understand that when she calms down she's going to blame you for taking her seriously while she was out of her head."
"Tough," said James, not moving. "She broke it off, it's over. I'm not going back. This has been building for too long, it's too much a part of her. That's not going to work, you know."
"What isn't?"
"Lying there looking harmless. I know perfectly well you're going to attack me again as soon as I so much as blink."
"Actually, I kind of like it here." He called up the breeziest attitude he could summon. "You know, not everything she said was completely insane."
While James was trying to make sense of that, he moved. James sighed, rolled his eyes, and looked up past his head. "I knew it," he informed the ceiling cheerfully. "Was that just to distract me? And did you know that it's hard to breathe with someone sitting on your chest?"
"No and yes." He shifted his seat a bit farther down, freeing James' lungs and keeping contact. The kid felt warm and solid beneath him, just as solid below the rib cage as on it. He didn't want to get up, and he felt a sudden unreasoning anger at Lester.
"Thank you. So what did you mean?"
He just looked down. "You tell me." He kept looking the soft strong lines of him until James felt the results against himself and made a quiet, startled sound. He pressed his lips together, and mumbled an apology, and started to climb off, but James grabbed at his wrist.
He met the clear eyes, and James was looking back at him, really looking. "Today's been, I don't know, everything all at once, Gar. Really fast. It would be indecent, you know?"
"Sure, kid." He put a smile on. "Forget I--"
"Wait, Gary," James interrupted urgently. "All I'm asking is a little time. Just a little space. To get used to things, get caught up."
"Oh." He felt a grin bloom, lay one hand along the side of James' face and felt him smiling, too. "Time. Sure, James, I can handle that. We're talking, what, ten minutes?"
James rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right. You couldn't give me a week, at least?"
He considered it, and eventually decided, "I like my idea better."
The hazel eyes rolled again, but the lips below them were reluctantly pulling wide. Shaking his head, James drawled, "You would."
[end]